Laurence C. Smith
Professor
UCLA Department of Geography
1255 Bunche Hall, Box 951524, 405 Hilgard
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1524
t: 310.825.3154
f: 310.206.5976
email: lsmith[AT]geog[DOT]ucla[DOT]edu
office: 1127A Bunche Hall

EDUCATION

Ph.D Earth & Atmospheric Sciences, Cornell University, 1996

M.S. Earth Sciences, Indiana University, 1991

B.S. Earth Sciences, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1989

RESEARCH INTERESTS

Welcome to Professor Larry Smith's home page at the UCLA Department of Geography. I also hold a courtesy appointment in the Department of Earth & Space Sciences. My research interests focus on hydrology and the effects of climate and environmental change, especially in northern environments.

There is now broad scientific consensus that the northern part of our planet is rapidly transforming in response to climate warming, demographic trends, and large discoveries of natural gas and oil. High public interest in the region is obvious from the recent proliferation of high-profile journalism on the subject, and the 2007 Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Such awareness has heightened the demand for accessible, science-based research on emerging issues facing northern countries and elsewhere in the world. Furthermore, the work must be presented in a form useful to journalists, policy-makers, and the general public in addition to academics. To this end, I was awarded a 2006-07 Guggenheim Fellowship to travel extensively throughout the northern hemisphere, researching a scientifically rigorous yet accessible book titled THE WORLD IN 2050. A key quality of the book is its interweaving of rigorous science with personal observations and interviews of scientists, policy-makers, and local residents. Its objective is to provide a politically neutral synthesis of the physical, biological, and societal changes currently underway in the northern world, identify the challenges and benefits posed by continued warming and development in the region, and present an informed view of what the future may hold. It will be published by Dutton Books in late 2010.

GRANTS

Please click on "Curriculum Vitae" below for information on past and current grant activity

AWARDS

Bellagio Residency (2007)
Guggenheim Fellow (2006-07)
Discover Magazine Top 100 (2006)
AGU Frontier Lecturer (2005)
NASA New Investigator (2000)
AGU Outstanding Student Paper Award (1995)
NASA GSRP Fellow (1994-1996)
GSA Fahnestock Award (1994)
Most Outstanding Grad Student, Cornell (1993)

Please click on "Curriculum Vitae" below for other awards and information

GRAD STUDENTS

I have had the privilege of mentoring a very select group of extraordinary graduate students and postdoctoral researchers, namely:

Cynthia Hall-Atkinson (M.A., now working at JPL)

Dr. Karen E. Frey (M.A.,Ph.D., now Assistant Professor at Clark University, Department of Geography)

Dr. Yongwei Sheng (postdoctoral researcher, now Associate Professor at UCLA, Department of Geography)

Dr. Tamlin M. Pavelsky (M.A.,Ph.D., now Assistant Professor at UNC-Chapel Hill, Department of Geological Sciences)

Dr. Asa K. Rennermalm (postdoctoral researcher, now Assistant Professor at Rutgers University, Department of Geography)

Vena W. Chu (M.A., now earning PhD)

Scott R. Stephenson (now earning M.A.)

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

CURRICULUM VITAE (CV)

PAVELSKY, T.M., AND L.C. SMITH, Remote sensing of suspended sediment concentration, flow velocity, and lake recharge in the Peace-Athabasca Delta, Canada, Water Resources Research, 45, W11417, doi:10.1029/2008WR007424, 2009.

SMITH, L.C., AND T.M. PAVELSKY, Remote sensing of volumetric storage changes in lakes, Earth Surface Processes and Landforms 34 (Special Issue on Remote Sensing of Rivers), 1353-1358, 2009.

RENNERMALM, A.K., SMITH, L.C. STROEVE, J.C., AND V.W. CHU, Does sea ice influence Greenland ice sheet surface-melt? Environmental Research Letters 4, 024011, doi:10.1088/1748-9326/4/2/024011, 2009.

LEWIS, S.M., AND L.C. SMITH, Hydrologic drainage from the Greenland Ice Sheet. Hydrological Processes 23, 2004-2011, doi:10.1002/hyp.7343, 2009.

BEILMAN, D.W., MACDONALD, G.M., SMITH, L. C., AND P.J. REIMER, Carbon accumulation in peatlands of West Siberia over the last 2000 years, Global Biogeochemical Cycles 23, GB1012, doi:10.1029/2007GB003112, 2009.

SMITH, L.C., AND T.M. PAVELSKY, Estimation of river discharge, propagation speed, and hydraulic geometry from space: Lena River, Siberia. Water Resources Research 44, W03427 doi:10.1029/2007WR006133, 2008.

SHENG, Y., SHAH C.A., AND L.C. SMITH, Automated image registration for hydrologic change detection in the lake-rich Arctic, IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Letters 5(3), 414-418, 2008.

PAVELSKY, T.M., AND L.C. SMITH, Remote sensing of hydrologic recharge in the Peace-Athabasca Delta, Canada. Geophysical Research Letters 35, L08403, doi:10.1029/2008GL033268, 2008.

SHAH C.A., SHENG, Y., AND L.C. SMITH, Automated Image Registration Based on Pseudoinvariant Metrics of Dynamic Land-Surface Features, IEEE Trans. Geoscience and Remote Sensing 46(11), 3908-3916, 2008.

PAVELSKY, T.M., AND L.C. SMITH, RivWidth: A Software tool for the calculation of river widths from remotely sensed imagery. IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Letters 5(1), 70-73, doi:10.1109/LGRS.2007.908305, 2008.

SMITH, L.C., PAVELSKY, T.M., MACDONALD, G.M., SHIKLOMANOV, A.I. AND R.B. LAMMERS, Rising minimum flows in northern Eurasian rivers: A growing influence of groundwater in the high-latitude water cycle. Journal of Geophysical Research 112, G04S47, doi:10.1029/2006JG000327, 2007.

WALTER, K. M., SMITH, L.C., AND F. S. CHAPIN III. Methane bubbling from northern lakes: Present and future contributions to the global methane budget, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A, 365, 1657-1676, doi:10.1098/rsta.2007.2036, 2007.

SHIKLOMANOV, A.I., LAMMERS, R.B., RAWLINS, M., SMITH, L.C., AND T. PAVELSKY, Temporal and spatial variations in maximum river discharge from a new Russian dataset. Journal of Geophysical Research 112, G04S53, doi:10.1029/2006JG000352, 2007.

FREY, K.E., MCCLELLAND, J.W., HOLMES, R.M. AND L.C. SMITH, Impacts of climate warming and permafrost thaw on the riverine transport of nitrogen and phosphorus to the Kara Sea. Journal of Geophysical Research 112, G04S58, doi:10.1029/2006JG000369, 2007.

SMITH, L.C., SHENG, Y., AND G.M. MACDONALD, A first pan-Arctic assessment of the influence of glaciation, permafrost, topography and peatlands on northern lake distribution. Permafrost and Periglacial Processes 18, 201-208, doi:10.1002/ppp.581, 2007.

FREY, K.E., AND L.C. SMITH, How well do we know northern land cover? Comparison of four global vegetation and wetland products with a new ground-truth database for West Siberia. Global Biogeochemical Cycles 21, GB1016, doi:10.1029/2006GB002706, 2007.

FREY, K.E., SIEGEL, D.I., AND L.C. SMITH, Geochemistry of West Siberian streams and their potential response to permafrost degradation, Water Resources Research 43, W03406, doi:1029/2006WR0049022006, 2007.

PAVELSKY, T.M., AND L.C. SMITH, Intercomparison of four global precipitation datasets and their correlation with increased Eurasian river discharge to the Arctic Ocean, Journal of Geophysical Research,111(D21112), doi:10.1029/2006JD007230, 2006.

MACDONALD, G. M., BEILMAN, D.W., KREMENETSKI, K. V., SHENG, Y., SMITH, L. C., AND A.A. VELICHKO, Rapid early development of circumarctic peatlands and atmospheric CH4 and CO2 variations, Science 314, 285-288, 2006.

SMITH, L.C., SHENG, Y., MAGILLIGAN, F.J., SMITH, N.D., GOMEZ, B., MERTES, L.A.K., KRABILL, W.B. AND J.B. GARVIN, Geomorphic impact and rapid subsequent recovery from the 1996 Skeišarįrsandur jökulhlaup, Iceland, assessed with multi-year airborne lidar, Geomorphology 75, 65-75, 2006.

SAMPSON, K.M., AND L.C. SMITH, Relative ages of Pleistocene moraines discerned from pebble counts: Eastern Sierra Nevada, California. Physical Geography 27(3), 223-235, 2006.

SMITH, L.C., SHENG, Y., MACDONALD, G.M. AND L. DHINZMAN, Disappearing Arctic lakes, Science, 308, 1429, 2005.)

Supporting Online Material (SOM) for 2005 Science paper

FREY, K.E., AND L.C. SMITH, Amplified carbon release from vast West Siberian peatlands by 2100, Geophysical Research Letters, 32, L09401, doi:10.1029/2004GL022025, 2005.

ALSDORF, D.E., T. DUNNE, L.A.K. MERTES, J.M. MELACK, SMITH, L.C. AND L.L. HESS, Diffusion modeling of recessional flow on central Amazonian floodplains, Geophysical Research Letters, 32(21), Art. No. L21405, 2005

BJERKLIE, D.M., MOLLER, D., SMITH, L.C AND S.L. DINGMAN, Estimating discharge in rivers using remotely sensed hydraulic information, Journal of Hydrology 309(1-4), 191-209, 2005.

SMITH, L. C., MACDONALD, G. M., VELICHKO, A. A., BEILMAN, D.W., BORISOVA, O. K., , FREY, K. E. , KREMENETSKI, K. V., AND Y. SHENG, Siberian peatlands a net carbon sink and global methane source since the early Holocene, Science 303, 353-356, 2004.

Supporting Online Material (SOM) for 2004 Science paper (BASAL PEAT RADIOCARBON DATES)

PAVELSKY, T.M. AND L.C. SMITH, Spatial and temporal patterns in Arctic river ice breakup observed with MODIS and AVHRR time series, Remote Sensing of Environment 99(3),328-338, 2004

SHENG, Y., SMITH, L. C., MACDONALD, KREMENETSKI, K. V., FREY, K. E. G. M., VELICHKO, A. A., LEE, M., BEILMAN, D.W., AND P. DUBININ, A High-resolution GIS-based inventory of the West Siberian peat carbon pool, Global Biogeochemical Cycles 18, GB3004, doi:1029/2003GB002190, 2004.

SMITH, L.C., SHENG, Y., FORSTER, R.R., STEFFEN, K., FREY, K.E., AND D.E. ALSDORF, Melting of small Arctic ice caps observed from ERS scatterometer time series, Geophysical Research Letters 30(20), Article no. 2034, doi:10.1029/2003GL017641, 2003.

FREY, K.E., AND SMITH, L.C., Recent temperature and precipitation increases in West Siberia and their association with the Arctic Oscillation, Polar Research 22(2), 287-300, 2003.

FREY, K.E., SMITH, L.C., AND D.E. ALSDORF, Controls on Eurasian coastal sea ice formation, melt onset and decay from ERS scatterometry: Regional contrasts and effects of river influx, International Journal of Remote Sensing 24(24), 5283-5315, 2003

SMITH, L.C., Emerging applications of interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) in geomorphology and hydrology. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 92(3), 385-398, 2002.

MAGILLIGAN, F.J., GOMEZ, B., MERTES, L.A.K., SMITH, L.C., SMITH, N.D., FINNEGAN, D., AND J.B. GARVIN, Geomorphic effectiveness, sandur development and the pattern of landscape response during jökulhlaups: Skeišarįrsandur, southeastern Iceland, Geomorphology, 44(1-2), 95-113, 2002.

HALL-ATKINSON, C., AND L.C. SMITH, Delineation of delta ecozones using interferometric SAR phase coherence: Mackenzie River Delta, N.W.T., Canada, Remote Sensing of Environment, 78, 229-238, 2001.

ALSDORF, D.E., SMITH, L.C., AND J.M. MELACK, Amazon water level changes measured with interferometric SIR-C radar, IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing, 39(2), 423-431, 2001.

HALL, D.K., WILLIAMS, R.S., BARTON, J.S., SIGURDSSON, O., SMITH, L.C., AND J.B. GARVIN, Evaluation of remote-sensing techniques to measure decadal-scale changes of Höfsjokull Ice Cap, Iceland, Journal of Glaciology, 46(154), 375-388, 2001.

SMITH, L.C., MACDONALD, G.M., FREY, K.E., VELICHKO, A., KREMENETSKI, K, BORISOVA, O., DUBININ, P., AND R.R. FORSTER, U.S.-Russian venture probes Siberian peatlands' sensitivity to climate, Feature article, Eos, 81(43), 497, 503-504, 2000.

SMITH, L.C., ALSDORF, D.E., MAGILLIGAN, F.J., GOMEZ, B., MERTES, L.A.K., SMITH, N.D., AND J.B. GARVIN, Estimation of erosion, deposition, and net volumetric change caused by the 1996 Skeišarįrsandur jökulhlaup, Iceland, from SAR interferometry, Water Resources Research, 36(6), 1583-1594, 2000.

ALSDORF, D.E., MELACK, J.M., DUNNE, T., MERTES, L.A.K., HESS, L.L., AND L.C. SMITH, Interferometric radar measurements of water level change on the Amazon flood plain, Nature, 404, 174-177, 2000.

SMITH, L.C., Time-trends in Russian Arctic river ice formation and breakup: 1917-1994, Physical Geography, 21(1), 46-56, 2000.

GOMEZ, B., SMITH L.C., MAGILLIGAN, F. J., AND L.A.K. MERTES, Glacier outburst floods and outwash plain development: Skeišarįrsandur, Iceland, Terra Nova, 12, 126-131, 2000.

ALSDORF, D.E. AND L.C. SMITH, Interferometric SAR observations of ice topography and velocity changes related to the 1996 Gjalp subglacial eruption, Iceland, International Journal of Remote Sensing, 20(15-16), 3031-3050, 1999.

SMITH, L.C., AND D.E. ALSDORF, A control on sediment and organic carbon delivery to the Arctic Ocean revealed with space-borne synthetic aperture radar: Ob’ River, Siberia, Geology, 26(5), 395-398, 1998.

SMITH, L.C., TURCOTTE, D.L., AND B.L. ISACKS, Streamflow characterization and feature detection using a discrete wavelet transform, Hydrological Processes, 12, 233-249, 1998.

SMITH, L.C., Satellite remote sensing of river inundation area, stage, and discharge: A review, Hydrological Processes, 11, 1427-1439, 1997

SMITH, L.C., FORSTER, R.R., ISACKS, B.L., AND D.K. HALL, Seasonal climatic forcings on alpine glaciers revealed with orbital synthetic aperture radar, Journal of Glaciology, 43, 480-488, 1997.

FORSTER, R.R., SMITH, L.C., AND B.L.ISACKS, Effects of weather events on X-SAR returns from icefields: A case study of the Hielo Patogonico Sur, Annals of Glaciology, 24, 367-374, 1997.

SMITH, L.C., ISACKS, B.L., BLOOM, A.L., AND A.B. MURRAY, Estimation of discharge from three braided rivers using synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellite imagery: Potential application to ungaged basins, Water Resources Research, 32(7), 2021-2034, 1996.

SMITH, L.C., ISACKS, B.L., FORSTER, R.R., BLOOM, A.L., AND I. PREUSS, Estimation of discharge from braided glacial rivers using ERS-1 SAR: First results, Water Resources Research, 31(5), 1325-1329, 1995.

SMITH, L.C., AND G.A. OLYPHANT, Within-storm variations in runoff and sediment export from a rapidly eroding coal-refuse deposit, Earth Surface Processes and Landforms, 19, 369-375, 1994.